Yo Holmes, to Bel-Air

Here we have a beautiful 1957 Chevy Bel-Air in the shop to get a new lease on life. We started by disassembling the front end and sending all of the parts out for stripping. Once back from the blasters, Jordan got to work sanding all of the parts prepping them for primer. Since this is an extremely important step, extra time was taken to be sure the metal was as clean as possible. Today we hung up all the parts and prepped them for PPG’s DP epoxy primer and applied 2 good coats. Next step will be to perform any metal work that needs to be done and start straightening the panels. The inner panels and fresh air vents will be prepped for paint since they wont really need any body work. Stay tuned.

Ratatouille (where’s Mike Rowe)

Big day here today. We had Soda Blasting NC come out to the shop to strip the Ghia. We chose to do it wet, to minimize the amount of dust that is created from the blasting. The process took about 6 hours today and worked really well. We found typical body repairs from over the years hidden under the layers of paint. The left fender fender has had its fair share of abuse as well as the left quarter. The rest is normal wear and tear from years of service. While we were washing the soda off we removed a little panel in the interior from under the back seat to find to come clean it out, but we figured we might as well go ahead and man up. Luckily they have all moved out. We didnt find any left behind bodies, but there were plenty of half eaten nuts, insulation, bits of card board and part of a bag of bread from UDF. We cleaned up the nest, washed it up one final time and wiped it all down with a pre paint cleaner. We plan on getting the body off of this by the end of the week.

’52 Ford

 Today we made great headway, Chris and I spent almost the entire day prepping these panels for POR and primer. We welded up quite a few tiny pinholes and also went ahead and smoothed up some heavily pitted areas on the inner fender panels. Tomorrow we will apply the POR to the bottom sides of these panels. This will ensure that any rusty pits get completely sealed up. We will then seam seal the areas where rust repair panels were welded in then spray our bedliner material on them. If that dries enough tomorrow we try to spray the primer on the other side.

Back on the ’52

While I was busy painting the Chevy truck, Chris was working on the ’52 Ford truck. These parts have been to the sand blaster so they need prepping up before they get primed. Chris got a few pieces sanded and also welded up a few pin holes that were in some of the parts. Tomorrow we both will be able to spend a full day on these parts so great progress should be made over the next few days.

Fender mender

As we get parts in from the blaster, we try to get moving on them as soon as possible. Today, the fenders for the ’52 Ford came in and we got right to work. Here you can see Jordan working on smoothing the surface from sandblasting. We sand the entire outside of the fender with 80 grit with a DA sander. We did find some very small pin holes around the lower areas of the fenders. We welded those up and ground them back down to make the area smooth again. This is a tedious process. Care must be taken to be sure we got them all. Once the holes were all fixed up, I used a hammer and dolly to start the straightening of the fenders. This smooths up the low and high places to get the metal a little closer to straight. This will save a little bit of time during the body work steps of these parts. We did get these all ready for primer today but first we will tackle the inside. Tomorrow we plan on applying a coat of POR15 on the insides of these fenders before we use a spray in bedliner to finish off the inside. Once all that dries, a coat of epoxy and 3 coats of slick sand will go on the outsides. This will provide a good amount of material to start blocking to get the outside good and straight.

Frame it

Keeping with the theme of working on the underside of this Chevelle, we decided to get the frame painted today. We spoke with the owner and they will be getting new gas lines and brake lines next week so we should be mating the frame and body back together soon. This black frame will look great against the blue on the bottom of the car.

Let their be light

Today we pulled out the hide away headlight brackets. Chris disassembled them and sand blasted them. After they were all stripped and all cleaned up, Chase did the magic in the booth. First of all a coat of epoxy primer was sprayed, followed by a couple of coats of egg shell black. They cleaned up very nice.  While the guys was doing this, I was busy with the wiring of the headlights and of the turn signals. Maybe we will have some pictures of that tomorrow.

Murray Champion

This is a Murray Champion pedal car. They made 2 versions of this model, a straight side and dip side. This one is the dip side version. This pedal car still belongs to the original owner. He has decided he want to bring it back to its original luster. This version was first introduced in 1951. I am not sure what year this one was made, but I can assure you that it has been well used and loved over its life time. We first started by disassembling the car. Then we sand blasted the parts that would fit in our cabinet. The body will go out to the same blasters that do our full size cars. New wheels, hub caps, tires, steering wheel and decals are all in order here. We are good, but not quite that good. The rest we will recondition and paint as best we can. It should be fully operational when finished. Stay tuned to see the progress.

Booth time

Today was a great day! We sprayed some epoxy primer on some Chevelle parts and slick sand on the fenders. The epoxy is great for bare metal. It fully encapsulates the panel with a tough water proof coating that sticks to metal better than glue. Over top of that we sprayed 3 coats of slick sand super high build primer on the outside of the fenders. There is no reason to put that on the inside parts of the jambs. The product is costly and its very labor intensive to sand. So we dont use it on jambs. The Slick Sand is used to have a thick film build to have something to block. Blocking ensures that the panel is straight and free from waves and small dings. Its a long tedious process but it pays off in the long run. 

 

 

 

We were also able to get the doors off and taken fully apart today. Here you see Chris cleaning up some edges on the jambs. The hinges were sandblasted today too. Tomorrow we hope to get the doors to the same point the fenders are to today. 

And here we go

With every great paint job there are hours upon hours of sanding. So today we got started sanding the Chevelle that was blasted last week. Like all projects we do, we started with 80 grit sand paper on a dual action sander. Chris and I sanded the fenders until they were smooth and shiny. This will ensure that the layers of primer and paint that are to come have a good clean substrate to stick to. We spent the better part of the afternoon on the fenders and were able to almost get them finished. We will have to go over some nooks and crannies in the morning but they are just about ready for the first steps of primer. We will probably wait until we have several things to go in the booth before they are primed though. Headlight doors, hood, doors will probably all get ready and primed at the same time. Being that this car is in great shape, it should move pretty quickly.